July 2004

A flying hotel has been proposed by Wimberley Allison Tong & Goo (but check out their space resort!), as part of a long-term campaign to design "entirely new kinds of destinations" – aka "successful destinations," leaving me, perhaps alone, to wonder what exactly an unsuccessful destination would be (a place at which you can never fully arrive...?).

WATG has even published a PDF – made out to look like a manuscript illustrated by Leonardo da Vinci – explaining their vision of this and other surrealistically imaginative resorts: they're creating the hotel of tomorrow.(Can anyone say Archigram?)

Perhaps no one will be surprised by this, but I find the project totally fascinating – even if it is designed by an international tourism consultancy firm (an industry brilliantly satirized by Michel Houellebecq's novel Platform [not for everyone]). I'm still into this thing. In fact, BLDGBLOG could buy one of these hotels and move our offices permanently into the stratosphere. I'd look forward to it.

Its sad that we live in a time where I think of mega-projects (like the airships or the ocean-going Freedom Ship) mainly as potential targets for terrorism, as opposed to the late-realized dreams past designers thought the future world would hold.

History of The Future is what comes to mind when I think of the hopes illustrators and designer had in mind back in the day of boundless ambition.

Now mind you, I love airships like crazy, but I also recognize that there were a technology strictly made possible by the depression.

Airships needed the depression. They needed hyper-rich patrons and great hordes of skilled builders who would work for almost nothing. It's the only way for the Venn-diagram circles of "supply" and "demand" to touch.

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BLDGBLOG ("building blog") is written by Geoff Manaugh. The opinions expressed here are my own; they do not reflect the views of my friends, editors, employers, publishers, or colleagues, with whom this blog is not affiliated. More.